


The Devil in Music

by tradescant (tofty)



Category: Amadeus (1984)
Genre: Antonio Salieri/Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-19
Updated: 2004-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-15 09:38:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/159489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofty/pseuds/tradescant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prayer for the dying. Takes place in movie canon after Mozart sneaks out of his wife's clutches and before he finds that cabin in the woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil in Music

_And now, a madness began in me, the madness of a man splitting in half. Through my influence, I saw that Don Giovanni was played only five times in Vienna, but in secret, I went to every one of those five, worshipping the sound which I alone seemed to hear. And as I stood there, understanding how this bitter old man was still possessing his son, even from beyond the grave, I began to see a way, a terrible way, I could finally triumph over God.  
_  
:::

It is many years later, and still I can feel the chill of the hall seeping through my cloak as I stood there, shivering in anticipation--I remember, too, shivering this way over those first flute notes at the emperor's concert hall, the day I first saw him, the same giddy delight, the same recognition of an unexpected manifestation of genius. But something new as well outside Mozart's door, the anticipation of the triumph within my grasp. A bit in the black velvet pouch of money I held just in case he had finished, more in the flat of my gloved hand, hitting stubbornly at the door. Yes, I remember it all.

The hall was grave-cold, the interior of the Mozarts' rooms ghost-cold, but inside that mask it was warm as life, the chill against my legs and the heat against my cheeks, and his monkeyish baby face, pulled tight with dumb terror and anger. Still and silent, another mask locked in some comic, horrifying rictus. How I hope you were paying attention that night, to see that face, to know my pleasure in it.

After the shock came the excuses and introductions which meant little to me, since he did not know it but I'd met his wife, and since I'd not the least interest in that common whore, and since I could scarcely hear his voice over my hollow breaths inside the mask. It played out in my head like an opera; lace and silk and paint, candle-wax dripping, and I could hear the music of it echoing in my ears. "Give me two more weeks. Please." The words set to a melody that roared in my head, and I do not remember my reply. Two more weeks, and he would be mine.

The door finally shut in my face, and perhaps some demon whispered in my ear, a conduit you never saw fit to use for your own, but however it happened, I made my way downstairs in the sotto voce coda filtering through the door, and I lingered in the arcade outside the building, snow settling lightly on the shoulders of my rochelaure. And some two hours later he appeared, in a billow of white nightshirt and a haze of delirium, crunching through the snow, following, perhaps, his own demons, fleeing me, another demon. Not the only one, but the most important one. Yes.

Oh, he may have been trying to escape me, or my specter, but I was determined not to let him escape, not that night, and my will was ever stronger than his, and so together we kicked a path in the snow to a little house on the outskirts of Vienna, our footprints mine over his slipping and becoming something inhuman and unrecognizable. To this day, I do not know if he saw me; but I was not troubling myself to keep hidden, and though he never once looked back that night, only forward, locked to his destination, I like to think that he knew. That he accepted my presence, that that was the night he acknowledged that I would be his shadow for as long as I chose, until I did kill him. Even before I caught him up, and there (washed in the warm light spilling from the windows and in the rumbles and trills from the revelers inside) I showed him the worst and best a father can be, enough to keep him in brutal nightmares, or lovely dreams--like a black-painted-two-sided domino mask--for the rest of his stunted, glorious little life. Here, I thought as he spent himself in horror and exaltation in my arms, half-cold, half-dead under the eaves of the house. Whatever may happen after tonight, here is my genius, here is my depth, my passion, my own glory, my music. Here is my gift to you, and my gift to myself. That night, I made myself into a god.

:::

And I am alone now in this room, fed to keep me alive and neglected whenever possible. I delight in the grasping indifference of my keepers, because they leave me to this and this is what fortifies me, and has for all these years: my God, I promised you my chastity and my industry, and let us both admit it only here, between us, now that other ears are gone, that it got me so far and no further. It got me a paneled and gilded study, and the praise of a few men of limited understanding and less taste. It got me quiet nights of leisure to reflect on where I had failed you, and that is what it got me, and that was not enough. But what I got for myself, what I took from you--

It is many years later, and I can say this now. I have won. I have lost too, lost some things forever. But some things are worth the losing.


End file.
